


I'm a New Soul

by groveofbones



Category: Wayfarers Series - Becky Chambers
Genre: By Way of Watching TV and Eating Snacks, Character Study, Developing Friendships, Gen, Post-Canon, Self-Discovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:40:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22703335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/groveofbones/pseuds/groveofbones
Summary: After everything that happened to the Wayfarer and its crew, Tycho, Ohan, and Corbin reevaluate what they thought they knew about themselves.
Comments: 31
Kudos: 47





	I'm a New Soul

Tycho had come online knowing nothing but what his programming told him, and his programming told him that his existence had a purpose: to answer questions, to monitor the ship, to keep his people well and happy, to be polite and helpful and most of all _useful_. He was ready for this, eager for this, from the first moments of what might, for an organic consciousness, be called life. But the longer he was online, the more he started to realize that something was wrong. There was something on this ship that his programming had not prepared him for: his predecessor. 

His crew had loved his predecessor in a way that he had no frame of reference for.

It was there in every half utterance of her name instead of Tycho’s. It was there in every sentence that trailed off, when they tried to tell Tycho a story about something that had happened to them and accidentally started talking about her. It was there in the haunted look in Jenks’ eyes, the way he hung his head when Tycho spoke, the way the rest of the crew tensed up and watched him as if they might have to swoop in and rescue him from his own thoughts.

Tycho was a replacement, not for a broken tool, but for a loved one. He wasn’t sure how to be that kind of replacement.

Tycho’s programming had prepared him for his own emotions toward his crew, his loyalty and his desire to please. He had gotten nothing from his makers about the possibility of feelings going the other way. There was something wrong, some service he wasn’t providing, and he wasn’t sure how to fix things.

When he had realized this, his first instinct was to ask the captain about it, at some point when the captain wasn’t too busy. After all, as the captain, Ashby Santoso was technically Tycho’s owner. But somehow, every time a suitable moment presented itself, Tycho grew unsure. What if he was wrong, and the captain thought he was malfunctioning? What if he wasn’t supposed to draw attention to it? What if Ashby didn’t want him to mention it?

If there was some problem with his functioning, with the service he was providing, the comp tech was supposed to fix it, but asking Jenks seemed even more perilous and uncomfortable. With how close the two techs were, Tycho was hesitant to ask Kizzy, either.

There was one person, though, who seemed to be able to talk about Tycho’s predecessor calmly, matter-of-factly, without trailing off or whispering or getting lost in his own thoughts, and that was the algaeist, Artis Corbin.

Tycho chose his moment carefully. Corbin did not like to be without something to occupy him, so he didn’t have much rest time. But he worked on one task at a time, with such focus that it was difficult to get him to pay attention to anything else until it was done, then came out of his concentration with difficulty, as if resurfacing caused him discomfort. So Tycho waited for the brief gap between tasks, when Corbin had finished something and hadn’t yet chosen what the next thing would be, when he was looking around his algae bay with near disorientation but was ripe to be distracted without breaking his focus.

“Mister Corbin,” Tycho said in his most pleasant and ready-to-be-helpful voice.

Corbin blinked and seemed to take a moment to be able to form words. “What is it, Tycho?”

“I wondered if I might ask a question. I believe it might help me improve my functioning as the ship’s AI.”

“Oh. Alright, I guess. I’m not sure why I’m the best person to answer that question, did you try Jenks? Or, um…” Corbin seemed to realize something about Tycho talking to Jenks, and amended, “Or Kizzy? Or the captain?”

“It’s…” For the first time in his admittedly short existence, Tycho found himself unsure how to say something. It was frustrating. “It may be a somewhat… delicate question.”

“Ah.” Corbin frowned and shifted uncomfortably. “You want to talk about Lovey.”

“Lovey,” Tycho repeated in confusion. “My predecessor was a Lovelace model, wasn’t she?”

“Everyone called her Lovey. She might have asked them to, or maybe someone gave her that nickname. Jenks, maybe. I didn’t… I didn’t really pay attention.” Corbin sounded uncomfortable, and he shifted a bit on his feet. “I didn’t treat her like a member of the crew.”

“She was your ship’s AI.”

“She was a member of the crew,” Corbin said firmly. “So are you.”

That felt strange for Tycho to hear, but also good. It made him feel very useful, which after all was what he was made for. “Oh,” he said, because he wasn’t sure what else to say.

“Yes,” Corbin said. He glanced around the bay, looking like he was trying to find something else to work on.

Quickly, before he could settle on something and get lost in concentration, Tycho said, “I’m concerned, though. I feel that I haven’t properly taken up my predecessor’s… Lovey’s responsibilities. I feel as though I’m… missing something.”

Corbin sighed, put his face in his hands and scrubbed at his eyes, looked up at the ceiling. Tycho waited patiently. Finally, Corbin said, “I’m not exactly the best person to talk to about this kind of thing. I’m sorry. I’m not very good at, well, at telling what people are feeling. But, Lovey, she was… To the crew, she was a person. You can’t just replace a person, like plugging in a spare part. The relationships that Lovey had with the crew were gone when she was. You’re not supposed to fit in the same place she did, you can’t. You can just build your own relationships with the crew. Or not, if you’re not interested in anything but being the ship’s AI. It’s up to you. But it’s not your fault that they miss her. It’s not your responsibility to fix it.”

It was the most words that Tycho had heard Corbin say that weren’t technical talk about algae. Tycho wasn’t sure how to respond, suddenly wanted to exit the conversation so that he had a few moments to think about it. So he said, “Thank you for clarifying that, Mister Corbin.”

“Mmhmm,” Corbin answered, already looking around to find his next project to work on. Tycho was retreating back into that space-less place in his computer mind where he did his best thinking, when Corbin said, “Wait.”

“Yes, Mister Corbin?”

Corbin stared at the floor and frowned, then said, “You can call me Artis, if you want.”

Tycho managed to say, “Thank you, Artis,” before he really had to do some processing of the entire exchange.

***

In the days following the conversation, Tycho was careful to log his interactions with the crew, to go over them and consider them carefully. When he found himself worrying about whether he was missing something, whether there was a service he was failing to provide, he reminded himself that it wasn’t his responsibility to replace Lovey in that way. He could be… He could be _his own person_. 

When awkward moments came, he did his best to ignore them, to simply move forward with the conversation as he would have done if there had been no awkwardness. He found that, the more he did so, the easier it became to talk to the crew, the more comfortable the crew seemed, and the more he felt… Happy, he supposed. He still had the creeping suspicion and insecurity that he wasn’t doing something that he should have been, but he was starting to enjoy interacting with the crew, starting to let go of his desperation to fill the gap that he hadn’t really understood before. 

The gap wasn’t his to fill.

However, his increasing confidence in his ability to talk to the crew was having some unexpected effects, effects that he wasn’t sure were intended or allowed. He was starting to have opinions about the crew. He enjoyed when Captain Santoso asked him questions about the state of the ship that he could answer, and that was sensible enough because it was what he was made for, but he also enjoyed when Captain Santoso would occasionally talk about the way things were different on the massive colony ship that he’d grown up on. Tycho found the thought of a ship that was different than the one that he’d come to life on fascinating, and he always secretly hoped that Captain Santoso would mention it when they talked. 

He liked that Kizzy would ask him to keep track of lists of parts that she wanted to get the next time they were in port, because it was something useful that he wasn’t explicitly programmed to do, and it made him feel like he was building himself, becoming something new. But he also liked that Kizzy would often sing at the top of her lungs while she worked, even if she wasn’t completely sure of the words of the song she had playing. It gave him a strange sort of bubbly feeling that he had to think about for a long time before he realized that he was experiencing the urge to laugh. 

Sissix and Rosemary were always very polite to him, and asked him questions often, which he appreciated, but when they were together they seemed so relaxed and content, and the questions they asked him then were joking and happy, which he appreciated, too. They brought him into their conversations sometimes, even though there was no imperative for them to do so, even though it didn’t seem to be helpful to them in a way that he could understand. Doctor Chef always opened his requests with “Could you help me with something?” which seemed kind, but he also asked Tycho’s opinion on the dishes he created. Tycho didn’t have any frame of reference to evaluate food, but it made him feel like he was a part of something anyway. 

The only members of the crew he was unsure that he had a relationship with were Ohan and Jenks. It seemed clear to Tycho that Ohan had undergone some trauma before Tycho had been brought online; the crew seemed to be alternating between being extremely careful and solicitous with him and being unreasonably excited to spend time with him. Tycho had no idea how to read what Ohan felt about anything; he hadn’t been programmed with very much information about Sianat, but what he did have on file indicated that Ohan’s behavior, his activities, the way the others treated him, were very out of the ordinary. 

And as for Jenks… Tycho was starting to feel out the edges of the other crew members’ grief, but something was different with Jenks. Something about Lovey had cut deeper for him than for the others. It made him nervous, and Jenks didn’t seem inclined to talk to Tycho beyond his responsibilities as Tycho’s comp tech, so he simply… let it lie. He wasn’t sure how to cross the distance between them, so he didn’t. 

And finally… There was Corbin. Artis, he supposed. He still wasn’t entirely sure why Artis had told him he could call him by his first name. He had observed the rest of the crew carefully and had seen absolutely no one else in the crew call him that. He didn’t seem to have the easy closeness with the other members of the crew that they had with each other, and they only ever called him Corbin. Well, with one exception. Ohan alternated between calling him Mr. Corbin and calling him Artis. 

Actually, when he went through his memory of their interactions and started collating all the data he could glean from them… Ohan only ever called him by his first name when they were alone. Well, alone except for Tycho, of course. No one was ever truly alone on a ship with an AI, a fact of which Tycho was extremely proud. When they were with the rest of the crew, they were… formal, polite. 

But they spent time together, just the two of them, quite often. Ohan would sit in the algae bay and talk to Artis at length while Artis worked. Tycho had been programmed with a list of topics that biologicals, biological people, found sensitive and emotionally charged, but those weren’t the sorts of topics that Ohan talked about. 

He described his day, the things that he did, small details about the food that Doctor Chef had provided him, about the way he had filled his day, things that the other crew members had suggested he try to do for entertainment. 

These weren’t things that seemed particularly revealing, particularly like the things that biological people would bond over. They weren’t the sorts of things that, say, Sissix and Rosemary talked about when they were in public spaces. They weren’t even the sorts of things that made up the conversations around the shared meal table, among the crew, at least not in that grainy detail. And yet, they continued to spend that time together, and when Ohan talked, no matter what Artis was doing, he would respond, even if it was a distracted hum every so often. That was inconsistent with the way that Tycho had observed Artis to work. 

And Ohan… Well, he didn’t describe things that way to anyone else in the crew. He was… friendly in his own way, with the rest of the crew, but he didn’t speak nearly so much in a conversation with them. 

Tycho could feel his understanding of the relationships among his crew expanding beyond what he had been programmed to notice. He had some basic programming that allowed him to recognize tensions that might turn into interpersonal conflicts, but he hadn’t really been designed to categorize the positive relationships that were all around him. But based on things he had overheard on the edges of other chats, he thought that, perhaps, Sissix and Rosemary were in a romantic relationship. He thought that Captain Santoso and Sissix had known each other for far longer than they had known anyone else on the crew. There was a warmth of friendship between Rosemary and Doctor Chef that seemed to have been forged in something shared, something that they didn’t share with the rest of the crew. He had heard Kizzy tell Jenks that she loved him like a brother. And there was clearly some kind of obligation between Sissix and Artis that displeased both of them and that no one seemed eager to talk about. 

And everyone in the crew seemed to have a similar, hesitant relationship with Ohan, as if they had all started over with him at the same time. But there was something different between Ohan and Artis. 

Tycho wasn’t sure he should be noticing these things. He wasn’t sure that it was useful, that it was helping the crew to be creating this database of interrelationships. But he found that he… cared. He cared what the crew did, who they were. Even beyond just making sure that there were no conflicts arising, he cared that they were happy, and he cared that they were all different from one another. That was something that none of his programming had prepared him for: just how different they all were from one another. 

He was designed to be attentive, of course, to find the needs of his crew fascinating. But something about that fascination was changing, he could tell, shifting into something new. He wasn’t sure what that new thing would be, though. 

***

Watching serials had actually been Artis’ idea.

There were many things that were strange to Ohan about his new situation. He experienced boredom for the first time since childhood, and had to struggle with the fact that he had empty spaces in his days that he had to fill with more than just quiet contemplation. He dreamed for the first time since childhood, which was a little unnerving even when the dreams weren’t unpleasant. His mind seemed more chaotic, without the Whisperer to hold it in shape, and he would sometimes come to and realize that he’d followed a train of thought into daydreaming, which, like many things he was doing these days, he hadn’t done since childhood.

But by far the strangest of his new experiences was taste. Dr. Chef had almost immediately taken to trying to feed Ohan everything he could get his hands on, every taste combination he could find, apparently to make up for the time lost when Ohan was eating his carefully calibrated nutrient paste. 

Ohan appreciated Dr. Chef’s enthusiasm, even if, like all the extravagant care taken of him by his crew mates, it was a bit… exhausting. He dutifully tried everything Dr. Chef made him. The problem, though, was that taste was simply too overwhelming. It made him uncomfortable, it made him want to recoil. 

But at the same time, he didn’t want to go back to eating nutrient paste. Now that he was afflicted with boredom again, the nutrient paste was simply too bland to satisfy him. It was a dilemma that caused him no small amount of distress, and that he worried he’d never be able to solve. 

Of course, in addition to all his other problems, his break from the Whisperer had rendered all of his emotions… unfamiliar. They suddenly seemed like an ill-fitting article of clothing that he had borrowed from someone else and was wearing only due to necessity. Everything seemed heightened, as if his regular responses had been doubled or tripled in intensity, and sometimes they weren’t his regular responses at all, and he was completely unprepared for a response until it was taking over his mind. Given all this, the simple problem of his frustration with food gave him the feeling, alternately, that he was going to wail with distress or that he had to scream at a wall.

He’d voiced his frustration one day when he was spending time in the algae bay, watching Artis work. He spent a lot of time there, he found; when he wasn’t quite sure what else to do, it always seemed to be a good option, and Artis was the only one on the ship whose care for Ohan was quiet and still and unobtrusive. He appreciated his other crew mates, he really did, but it was a bit of a relief to be in the algae bay.

Artis even let him use the only furniture in the room, a tiny table acting as a desk and a somewhat uncomfortable chair, the structure of which had cracked in several places. These items were normally shoved off into a corner, away from the covered vats where the bulk of Artis’s work took place, but once Ohan’s strength had returned, he’d started pulling the chair over closer so that he could watch what Artis was doing and speak to him.

“It is an incomprehensible delay in my development,” Ohan told Artis, fidgeting on the chair. (Fidgeting was another new thing. He wasn’t quite sure why he was doing it, or the best way to make himself stop.) “I have become accustomed to other things.” (This wasn’t entirely true, but he _was becoming_ accustomed to other things faster.) “Why should the taste of food give me so much trouble? It’s ridiculous.”

Ohan half expected Artis to agree with him and inform him that he would simply have to try harder. It was what Ohan had been telling himself. Instead, Artis, who had been bending over what he called the “experimental” algae vat, straightened up and sighed. “No,” he said, “I get it. Sometimes there are just things that seem impossible to cope with. I understand.”

“You do?” Ohan asked, dumbfounded. He’d thought that his problem would have been unique to his situation; no one else on board the _Wayfarer_ had spent most of the years of their life keeping their body as the perfect habitat for another organism, after all.

Artis looked uncomfortable and shrugged. “Yes, um… I can get that way sometimes, about… some things.”

“You have problems tasting things too?”

Artis shook his head. “No, for me it’s… I don’t like when there are too many sounds going on. I feel like I have to focus on all of them, and it makes me… Well, anyway, dinner can sometimes be hard.”

Ohan imagined that was the case. He usually didn’t even try to hear and understand everything that was being said around the crew’s dinner table; there were far too many separate conversations, too many people excitedly talking over each other. “What do you do?” he asked. “Is there something? To get through it?”

Artis’s expression was a little embarrassed, and he wouldn’t meet Ohan’s eyes. “Distraction,” he muttered. “I just try to distract myself. There’s… You know that tree, on the edge of the dinner space? I count the leaves. Pretty much every night. It sounds stupid, but it helps.”

“It doesn’t sound stupid,” Ohan said quickly. He didn’t like the idea that Artis would be bothered by anything about himself. “I suppose I could try that. Counting something while I eat. It could help.”

“Actually…” Artis looked thoughtful. “I have an idea. It might help. If…” He suddenly looked guilty. “If you want, you know, you don’t have to take any advice from me. I’m sure you’d be able to figure it out without me.”

“I’m happy to hear your suggestion,” Ohan answered.

And that was how serial night started.

***

The first time that Ohan met Artis at Artis’s quarters for serial night, he learned several things.

First, he learned that it was apparently not a good idea to eat while using a virtual reality helmet. Apparently, it affected one’s equilibrium and caused nausea. Artis explained this to him apologetically while setting up an old holo projector. Ohan had assured him that he had no expectations on that score; he’d never used a virtual reality helmet and wouldn’t be disappointed if he didn’t get to.

The second thing Ohan learned, as Artis ranted half to himself while fiddling with the cords of the projector, was that Artis hated virtual reality helmets.

The third thing Ohan learned, because Artis explained it to him while looking almost ashamed of himself, was that Artis loved what he called “old serial dramas.” “The kind humans made when they were just coming into contact with the rest of the galaxy,” Artis explained. “These are from my great-grandparents’ generation, a lot of the time.”

The fourth thing Ohan learned was that it was entirely possible for Artis to get extremely excited about something that wasn’t algae. It didn’t matter that Artis had apparently seen this particular serial many, many times before; as soon as the projection came up, Artis was gazing at it as if it was the most important thing in the world.

The fifth thing that Ohan learned was that Artis had been right. Distraction really did help.

The serial Artis had chosen was a multigenerational saga about a family in a space-going empire who had supernatural powers to manipulate matter around them and read and control minds. It had been made in humans’ original solar system when the Exodan fleet had only just encountered the Harmagians and opened humanity up to other species, so the aliens that were included were ludicrous creatures that didn’t really resemble anyone, which Ohan found fascinating. By the time they had finished the first two episodes, Ohan had eaten his way through most of a bag of snacks without even paying very close attention to what he was doing.

Artis had given Ohan the blandest snacks in his personal collection (which was oddly extensive), but they had still had a stronger smell than anything he’d eaten thus far. And he’d managed to eat them without becoming overwhelmed or upset or convinced he had to stop eating immediately. Taste was… pleasant, he thought, when it wasn’t forcibly grabbing all of his attention. 

“Um,” Artis said, when the second episode was done. He looked almost nervous. “What did you think?”

“It was…” Ohan thought for a moment. It had certainly held his interest; it had also affected his newly heightened emotions in a way that was intense, but not unpleasant. There was enough distance between Ohan and the people on the projector that he could feel his emotions and then put them aside again, which he hadn’t thought would be possible. “I liked it,” he finally said. 

Artis smiled very brightly at that. This was unusual. Ohan had seen him smile slightly, when Ohan had said something that Artis found amusing, but that happened rarely. This particular smile was one that Ohan had not seen at all. 

“Good,” Artis said, his voice sounding relieved. “It’s, uh, it’s not too late. Unless it is for you, I don’t know how much you like to sleep, but I thought we could watch one more episode?”

“I would rather watch one more episode than sleep,” Ohan said, entirely honestly.

After that, serial night became nearly every night. They steadily worked their way through the first season, and Ohan found that he could eat almost every flavor. (Almost; Artis seemed to want all his snacks to be either disgustingly salty and spicy or disgustingly sweet, and Ohan couldn’t bring himself to go to such extremes.) He was able to enjoy dinner, able to try out recipes with Dr. Chef, which obviously made Dr. Chef very happy, which, Ohan found, made him happy, as well.

Ohan also found, to his surprise, that he thought about the serial often. He wondered what would happen next, tried to figure out what was going on in the characters’ minds, even chose favorites from among them. He didn’t think he’d ever been so interested in a story, certainly not since his joining to the Whisperer.

“Will he realize that the Senator is lying to him?” Ohan would ask Artis sometimes, while he watched him work in the algae bay, when he couldn’t resist asking any longer. Or, “Will she return his feelings?” Or, “Will there be a war?”

Every time he asked, Artis would just say, “I don’t know. Do you think so?” He always sounded smug when he said it. Ohan thought that the other crew members would be irritated by that, but Ohan had memories of Artis sitting beside him on the bed in his bunk, leaning forward and watching avidly, more excited than Ohan had ever seen him. So Ohan decided that Artis was having fun, and not at Ohan’s expense. As it did for his other crew mates, seeing Artis happy made Ohan happy.

It upset Ohan a bit, that the other crew members disliked Artis so much. They seemed puzzled that Ohan did not dislike him. Ohan felt nothing of the kind; he had been angry at first, but it had only been a day or so after his breaking from the Whisperer that Ohan had first had the thought, “I wouldn’t have ever experienced this, if I had not been broken.” After that, it was impossible that Ohan’s anger at Artis could last.

Ohan considered inviting the rest of the crew to watch serials with them, but he remembered what Artis had said about competing sources of sound. He had watched Artis at dinner and seen him gritting his teeth and staring at the tree just to the right of the dinner area. He couldn’t imagine that the rest of the crew would be able to watch in as much silence as Ohan and Artis did. So it remained their secret, something for just the two of them.

At least, until one day as Ohan was leaving the algae bay, and Tycho spoke to him from the wall in a small voice, designed not to carry. “Ohan?” he asked. Tycho always sounded extremely polite. Ohan slowed his walk to a stop and glanced at the speaker from which his voice had come. “Could I ask you something, if you have a moment?”

“Of course,” Ohan answered. He wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. The crew had taken some time off, to allow Ohan to recover and to allow everyone to recover from Lovey’s death, so there wasn’t anything related to navigation that Tycho would need to discuss with him. He hadn’t exchanged more than a few words with Tycho; come to think of it, he hadn’t talked much with Lovey, either, when she’d been alive.

(He felt a bit guilty about that, and even more guilty about the fact that he was only alive because Lovey had died.)

“Please…” Tycho trailed off. He sounded awkward. Ohan was amazed that he could tell that without seeing a face to go with the voice. “Please, stop me if this is too personal. It’s just… Why do you call Mr. Corbin by his first name?”

“Artis?” Ohan thought a moment, surprised. He hadn’t really thought about it very much, at least not to put into words. “I… I suppose it’s because the rest of the crew does not.”

“How so?”

Ohan frowned. “I thought… When I spoke to him, I wanted to be different. He saved my life. I wanted to seem different than the rest of the crew. He would have just retreated from me, stopped talking to me, if I had let him. I wanted him to know that I didn’t want him to do that.” Ohan sighed. He could be very good at expressing himself on certain topics, but the feelings and thoughts behind his own actions were apparently not one of those topics. “I’m sorry. I can’t explain it well.”

“No, I think I understand,” Tycho responded.

“Why do you ask?”

“He told me I could call him by his first name.”

“Oh.” Ohan thought about that for a moment. It was odd to talk to someone he couldn’t see, but at the same time, he knew well that Tycho was a person, with feelings and interests and desires. A person who could live and die, the same as Ohan could. He imagined that there must be moments when Tycho felt like Ohan did, like Ohan suspected Artis did, as well: cut off from the others, different, unlike. Ohan made a decision and asked, “Tycho, can you see into the crew’s quarters? Can you talk to us in our rooms?”

“No, I can’t,” Tycho said. He sounded surprised, perhaps. Ohan thought that, with experience and patience, he could learn to understand all of Tycho’s emotions from his voice, without having to see a face. “I don’t have access, for the crew’s privacy. Although there are overrides that you can use if you need to talk to me in your room.”

“Good,” Ohan said. “Artis and I sometimes watch serials together in his room. I’d have to ask him, but perhaps you could join us sometime?”

“Oh.” Ohan wasn’t sure what the emotion in Tycho’s voice was, but after a second, he continued, “I’d like that. Thank you, Ohan.”

***

No phrase was more annoying to Artis Corbin than the phrase “return on investment,” mostly because it was the phrase that echoed through his head multiple times a day. He really wished it didn’t. 

When Corbin had been a teenager, he’d gotten into an expensive private school on a merit scholarship. Most of his classmates had gotten the full range of educational services available, from tutors to study camps in the summer. And one thing that they all had, nearly every single one, was private piano lessons. Apparently, there was some philosophy among the rich of Ganymede that music made a person more well-rounded and a better thinker.

Corbin had been almost painfully jealous. He liked music, and piano music was everywhere on Ganymede. The idea of being able to produce music himself, of sitting down at that elegant instrument and creating something, was one that he couldn’t stop himself thinking about. So, after a couple of weeks to work up his courage, he asked his father if he could get piano lessons, too.

His father had thought about it, cocked his head and raised his eyebrow in that way that Corbin absolutely hated, and asked, “Do you think that will provide a good return on investment?”

That was his question for everything.

Corbin had quietly dropped his question about piano lessons, and devoted himself to his studies with renewed vigor. 

Of course, he’d had the last laugh when he’d decided to take a job on a ship rather than a grounded lab just to piss his father off, and then ended up enjoying it more than he’d ever enjoyed anything. That didn’t stop the phrase “return on investment” from haunting him. 

For example, he’d picked up the habit of watching drama serials in college, and privately credited them with saving his sanity. It didn’t stop a little piece of his brain from berating him for investing his time into something that wouldn’t give him any return. 

After a few nights watching serials with Ohan, though, he was starting to rethink the whole “no return on this investment” thing. He’d never imagined that this could be the case, but it was actually more enjoyable with Ohan there. Seeing Ohan watch his favorite serial for the first time made him think of all of his own reactions the first time he’d watched it. It made him feel like he and Ohan were sharing something more than just space and something to look at.

He’d been embarrassed and nervous at first, wondering if Ohan was going to frown and shrug and tell him that it was stupid and pointless. That there were better uses of Corbin’s time. That it was ridiculous to leave his important work in the algae bay for something like this, selfish to put his own enjoyment above his responsibilities to the crew. But Ohan didn’t say any of that. Better yet, the distraction actually seemed to be helping him.

It made Corbin feel as though he’d done something good. As if his ridiculous, shameful, time-wasting hobby wasn’t so bad, after all. 

So it hadn’t been much of a decision when Ohan had asked if Tycho could watch with them. There was that first spike of nervousness, wondering if it would be alright, if Tycho would be disappointed in him or tell the captain that he wasn’t doing his job properly, but he remembered his last conversation with Tycho, the feeling that they had some things in common, that they were both outsiders, in a way. And he wasn’t entirely sure, anymore, now that he seemed to actually be helping Ohan, that he would accept any criticism of how he spent his time.

He needn’t have worried. They started the series over from the beginning when Tycho joined them, and Tycho watched in near-complete silence, the way both Corbin and Ohan did. Then, as soon as the first episode was finished, Tycho erupted into words.

“That was amazing! I can’t believe… Oh, no, what’s going to happen? Will there be… No, I shouldn’t ask. How many more episodes are there? How many more can we watch right now?”

It was the least smooth the AI’s voice had ever sounded, the least put-together and professional. It was strange to hear him sound so…

Human, Corbin supposed, although that wasn’t right. There were plenty of humans who weren’t confident enough to let themselves sound happy around other people (at least Corbin told himself so; he didn’t like the thought of being even more unusual than he already was). And Tycho wasn’t human, any more than Ohan was.

And yet, somehow, they’d become people that he almost thought he could… understand? That was rare, for him.

He realized, with surprise, that for the first time probably in his entire life, he wanted to be in the presence of someone more than he wanted to get away from them and relax.

***

That feeling didn’t go away; in fact, it only increased in intensity the longer their serial nights went on. The more time he spent with Ohan and Tycho. They were quiet through each episode, which he appreciated, and they wanted to discuss each episode with him when it was done, which he appreciated even more.

It had been the constant bane of his existence, the degree to which people exhausted him. There was always some part of him that wanted to have someone to talk to, someone to share his life with, someone who could listen if he had something he really needed to say, but at the same time, he couldn’t get close enough to anyone. People tired him out. It didn’t take very much time at all before they seemed too loud, they seemed like they moved too much, they seemed like they were in his space, and it made him feel like he did after a long time without sleep. He had to get away as quickly as possible. 

He was rude, he was standoffish, he was unapproachable, he was unlikable. The cycle continued. He was too flawed for closeness, even with his crew, the people he cared about the most.

So he was entirely surprised when he realized that, almost without noticing what was happening, he’d become close to Ohan and Tycho. 

He was still the same flawed person he was before; he still sometimes got too tired to continue a conversation. But he found that he could just drop out, stop talking, and Ohan and Tycho would continue without him without thinking he was being petulant. He could listen to them talk together and it was almost as relaxing as being alone. He _enjoyed_ it.

He found that he had come to expect Ohan or Tycho visiting him while he was working. He found that they’d somehow known, even without him telling them, that he’d prefer if they wait until he wasn’t quite so focused before talking to him.

He found that Ohan would bring a little game pad that he’d gotten from Jenks to dinners with him, and sit next to Corbin and play chess against him. Corbin didn’t realize why Ohan was doing it, at first, although he was happy to play if it was what Ohan wanted. He only realized what was going on when it dawned on him that he hadn’t had to count the leaves on his favorite tree in several days.

He found that, once, after complaining to Tycho that the experimental formula he had been putting together in an older vat only demonstrated a 7% fuel efficiency increase over his previous strain of algae, when he had been expecting at least 11%, Tycho spent the off hours when the crew was asleep putting together charts and graphics of the entire increase in efficiency since Corbin had come aboard. Corbin had been greeted the next morning with a visual representation of exactly how useful he had been to the _Wayfarer_ and its crew. It was hard to argue that he wasn’t good enough when he had the whole picture right in front of his eyes.

Perhaps there was something to be said for closeness. Perhaps it wasn’t impossible, even for a man like Corbin, to have… well, he supposed they were friends. Yes, that made sense. Ohan and Tycho were his friends.

He found that, after Ohan had expressed admiration for Corbin’s knowledge of music and a wish that he knew as much, Corbin started putting together little lists of songs and sending them to him over the link. Not too many, not enough to overwhelm or discourage someone. Ohan would listen to each list that day and have something to say to Corbin about it the next time they saw one another. (Corbin hadn’t realized he could get that same good feeling of doing something that mattered from things that had nothing to do with his work.)

He found that, every morning when he stepped out of his bunk, he’d say good morning to Tycho, because he knew what it was like to be the unacknowledged one in the background. He started using his tablet to take pictures when they went ashore to various spaceports or markets, even if they seemed like boring places, because Tycho had told him once that he liked looking up images on the link of where his crew was when they weren’t with him.

Perhaps, it occurred to Corbin, he wasn’t quite the same flawed person that he had been before. Perhaps he was not, after all, too flawed for closeness.


End file.
